


Kuron Week

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Kuron (Voltron)-centric, Kuron Week 2018, Kuron deserved better, Operation Kuron (Voltron), all shiros are good shiros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 10:57:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16680322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: so it was Kuron week over on tumblr and our clone deserves all the love he can get.  Collection of short stories based on the prompts featuring 'Operation Kuron'.





	1. hero/villain

He’s not a hero.

None of them are.

The original - _he_ had been a hero. Their template.  A war hero and a galaxy hero and when he died - too young, too soon, too brave - the galaxy had still needed him.  Not ready to let him go.  It started off as a desperate gamble, a hopeless try, a last clawing grab at disappearing starlight as the universe fell into the pit of dark eternity -   
  
but it had worked.

Flawed.  But it had worked.

And, over the generations, the flaws were refined.  Smoothed out. Trail and error.  Dead ends cut off, promising leads followed.  Until it was perfect.

Until _they_ were perfect.

Kuron steps out of his tube and the room is cold, raises goose-bumps on his pale, bare skin.  The sensation is almost too much, too many nerves suddenly firing for the first time, air, freezing pulled down his throat for the first time, expanding his lungs with its ice.  He doubles over and coughs.  Coughs until the muscles in his stomach hurts and he tastes bile - but his lungs keep breathing.  The air comes automatically.  The sound of his own coughing kills the leftover ringing in his ears from a silence that had been his entire life until seconds ago.  He rests a hand on the tube, hears the metallic chime of metal against metal.   Shudders and inhales again, slow so he doesn’t start himself coughing.   Shivers. Turns his head to see the rows and rows of tubes.

All full of him.  Other hims.

Other _him_ s.

There’s a swish.  Fabric.  He turns his head automatically, pupils tightening so sharply he can almost feel it.  Sees a shadow and tries to straighten as it approaches.  His stomach hurts, twists, wants to vomit but he forces himself to attention, forces himself straight and still.   

Centuries ago, the universe lost its hero.

Heroes never die.

Not if you’re clever enough.

He’s awake because the universe needs a hero again.  Needs _The_ Hero again.  

He understands this, pulls in a deep breath that only shakes a little. He will be what the universe needs.  Because its what he was born for.  He cannot be anything else.

In front of him the other person, his commander and his instructor, the one that will point him where a hero is needed and let him loose, raises their head. Pushes back the hood of their robe.

“Welcome back,” she says and her golden eyes glow in the dim purple light from the myriad of tubes.  "Champion.“


	2. confusion/order

There are thirty-two separate panels in the Black Lions cockpit.   Thirteen segments to its chair, if you count the ones on the back as well.  Fifty-seven distinct keys on the right display when its waiting for input.  Two control sticks he suspects are for his benefit and not for Black’s.

He counts things.

Its new.  He knows its new and that disturbs him.  Every time he senses he’s doing something new it disturbs him.  That - isn’t new.  He’s been second guessing every new habit and potential rising trait since he made it back to Earth and realized he had a huge hole in his memories and a foreign arm soldered onto him.  Testing each one, suspicious that its not his, trying to align who he has become with who he thinks he remembers himself being instead.  

Counting isn’t the first new habit to spring up.  Its not even the most alarming one.

But it still bothers him.

He never had to count things before.

Ten fingers, five are metal, two eyes, one nose.  One hundred and thirty scars because he counts the small ones and the ones that are serrated each get their own separate count to add to the whole as well.  The scars on his human hand too.  Across his palm and over his knuckles and the bones of his wrist.    
  
He’s Shiro.  This is him.  Ten fingers, two eyes, one nose.  One hundred and thirty scars.  That’s him.  He can count them and prove to himself that he is who he is supposed to be.    
  
Thirty-two panels.  Thirteen segments.  Fifty seven keys.  Two control sticks.

  
Black is still Black.    
  
When his head clutters, when it hurts so much he sees double, when he thinks he hears whispers around an empty corner, when nothing feels like he knows it should -   
  
he counts.

Eleven hundred forty-two steps between his cabin and the bay that holds Black. Four prongs on the spork in his hand.  Fifty-four pieces to the gladiator robot. Each of his own fingers is three segments.  When the world slips sideways, when in his head it doesn’t make sense because something’s not right and he doesn’t know if its him or the world or nothing at all or everything - when the confusion sets in - he counts.

Because in counting he can force order on things.  He can quiet the confusion. He can prove to himself that things are the same as they should be.

That _he_ is the same as he should be.

Shiro takes the confusion and he counts it into order.

Four other paladins.

Four mice.

One Coran.

One missing friend.

One Black Lion.

  
One Black Paladin. 

 

_…him…_


	3. belive/suspect

Takashi Shirogane believes that there is nothing more worthwhile in the universe than helping people.

He believes that life isn’t easy and that for some people its harder than it is for others.  He believes that everyone deserves a chance - two chances - ten. However many it takes until their feet finally find firm ground under them and they can find their way to shore.  He believes that its a cycle and there’s always another shore, always another way to step higher onto it even if you fall a hundred times and almost drown to get there.

He believes people are inherently good, even if he knows just as well that some people are never going to be anything but cruel.

Takashi Shirogane believes that people can be more than they are, that they have more than they realize inside themselves and that sometimes they need help to find it.  Because he also believes that life has a way of beating people down and trying to keep them down sometimes and no one can make it entirely on their own.  That helping hands matter, even the small, mundane, kind, gentle, almost invisible ones.

He believes in doing good for the sake of doing good, whether anyone will ever know or not.

He believes that if he can take the pain for someone else, if he can shield them until they get back on their feet, that its something worth doing even if it hurts.

Takashi Shirogane knows that some people will take advantage of that, and him, and he knows that he needs to make sure no one ever drains him so much for themselves that he’s no longer any good to anyone else.

He knows that people call him an idealist, an optimist, and he knows that some people don’t like him simply because of that fact.  That some people consider him boring.  That some people will never like him and that some people will try to drag him down, ‘prove’ to him that life is really ugly and so are all the people in it.  He suspects they do it because they’ve been hurt so long, and pressed down so long, that anything else hurts because they don’t think they’ll ever have it for themselves.    
  
He knows -

he knows that life isn’t fair and sometimes it is too hard and buries people despite their best efforts…..

He knows how much one person caring can matter and sometimes, being that one person is what keeps him going.  Not living for himself, because that’s not good enough to carry him through sometimes.  But - he can do more, be more, handle and carry more - if he’s doing it for someone else…..

Takashi Shirogane believes there’s nothing more noble than serving.

He believes that a leader should always serve.

Be the support.  Be the uplifter.  Be the rock against the storm.  He takes pride in being able to be that for others.

But -sometimes - quiet times - rare when the darkness of the night weighs heavy over him and the voice whispers behind his eyelids and the pain in his head is a constant throb -  
  
sometimes he suspects he’s done his job too well.  Been too convincing in his show of being a rock and a strong shelter, the one everyone else can always turn to for support and strength.  
  
Because -sometimes - he feels like he’s drowning himself -  
  
and he suspects there won’t be any hands held out to help him survive it if he reaches out in desperation for them just before he goes under.


	4. light/dark

It comes up more once they’re doing the Voltron Show.

Should he dye his hair?

Its a stupid question and he’s pretty sure Coran would say not to.  That the white tuft on his forehead makes him distinct.  A ‘signature’ look.

He stands in front of the mirror and pulls his fingers down through it anyway, watching his reflection in the glass.

Dark. It used to be dark.  He never considered himself overly vain about his hair but - he’d liked it.  Liked the cut, liked the color.  He wore it longer now because  -   
  
because he didn’t know why.  Just that his hands had stopped before they’re reached for the clippers to give him the close cut he was used to.  It - hadn’t felt right.  Hair that short.  He knew it _was_ right -   
  
it just hadn’t felt right.

He doesn’t need the buzzed cut to be who he is.

But the bangs….

His fingers card through the white again.  Push it back so that the light strands mixed with the dark.  Its his hair.  If he pulls it, it will hurt.  Leftover mark of some kind of trauma he doesn’t even remember…  Twenty-five years old and he’s already going white.

It’s a joke but it doesn’t make him feel like laughing.

Light and dark.  He lets go and the pale hair falls across his forehead, not as long as it had once been.  Could he cut the whole thing off?  Except then he really would look stupid.  Probably.  No.  If he was going to get rid of it he’d need to cover it over.  Dye it.  He hesitates over it.  Feeling almost as if - if he changes it - it will somehow be denying what had happened to him.  How it has changed him.  And yet - it bothers him.  That white hair.  So out of place against his own face.

He’ll dye it.  The next time things quieted down enough.  For his own sake.  To get back to what feels more like himself.

All he has to do to go dark   
  
is to let the light go.


	5. AU (Hope)

He knows what they really want.

 _who_ they really want

And so he lets go.

It hurts, letting go.  It hurts because he doesn’t want to leave that life behind.  It hurts because he knows he hurt them and this is the only way he can think of to make it up to them.  It hurts because the other - the _real_ Shiro - will be better for them than he ever could.

He made a promise to do whatever it takes to get them home.  Even if that means letting someone better than him step into his own body and have it for himself.

But it still hurts.

It hurts because he isn’t sure that any of them will care that he’s - the _he_ that knew them - is gone.

He still lets go.  He feels the wash of Allura’s magic, the slow spread of _other_ through his own body, the fading of his conscious -   
  
and he accepts it and lets go.

Its sad how easy it turns out to be for him to let go.  
  
He dies.  
  
  
  
  
He wakes up.

He wakes up coughing, choking, mouth tasting like tin, gagging and gasping for breath and he hurts.  Every fiber in his body hurts.  Flailing he tries to sit up, feels fire shoot up his spine and cries out automatically in response.  His motions spill him sideways as whatever he’s lying on tips and he goes tumbling, arms and legs, onto the freezing cold metal of a floor.  White hair spills across his eyes and this - this whole situation - is so familiar that it almost throws him into a flashback.  Galra ship.  His escape that turned out to not be an escape at all.  Already he’s scrambling, hands desperate, one flaring purple as his vision clears and he sees -   
  
nothing.  A great deal of - nothing.

There is not purple hive lighting above him, no familiar metal walls.  No closed doors or operating table or purple glowing liquid tubes.   Careful, cautious, he gets a knee under himself.  Raises his glowing hand in the dark and looks around.

Metal - box?  No.  Storage room.  Cargo hold.  He can see the handles welded into the floor to strap cargo down for zero gravity environments.  He’s surrounded by rusted, broken open metal containers and there’s the slow drip of liquid somewhere off in the dark.  Cautious, he stands and his legs feel weak.  He turns a full circuit but the glow from his hand doesn’t penetrate the darkness very far.  Whatever he’s in, its vast.

His hand….

It shuts off the second he thinks of it, the automatic fear and horror at what its become, what it truly is, sweeping through him hard enough to reject his connection to it.

But its still there, in the dark, attached to his arm, the familiar metal weight of it the way its always been.  He wraps his human hand around it and pulls. Knows how pointless it is because its not the first time he’s done it - that the other him had done it.  All it does is hurt, where its grafted into his flesh.  Its not coming off for something as little as his human strength.

He’s going to have to find a way to cut it off.

He doesn’t know what’s going on - and that’s terrifying in how familiar it feels.  

But he does know that the arm belongs to Haggar and that she’ll use it to control him and he won’t - he can’t bear - being her weapon again.  He’s not sure where he is or who brought him back or why - but he knows the arm has to come off.

Its the only thing he knows for sure.

Cautious, he lights it again.  Hate it or not, its all he has here.  Belatedly he checks the rest of himself.  Arms, legs, everything is there.  He’s dressed in his paladin uniform still but nothing comes when he concentrates on the small storage pouches on the belt of it and he rarely carries anything in them anyway.  He lets his human hand drop to his side, holding the other up like a torch and

he doesn’t mean to but apparently he was still searching with his mind subconsciously because the lights on the suit glow dimly and -   
  
thigh.  That’s his thigh lights that are glowing as   
  
as the Black Bayard materializes in his hand.  His human fingers close automatically around it and - he stares at it.  Lifting it in front of him.  
He’d left that behind.  When - Haggar had taken him he’d made sure he left it behind.  Keith -   
  
a flash, the memory of the black bayard cutting through his ruined arm and he staggered, pressing his good hand still holding the bayard against the place that had severed his body from the arm, feeling the flaming pain all over again. He drops to his knees

but the bayard stays in his hand and the only sound is the echo of his kneepads hitting the rusted metal floor.  
  
“What’s happening?”

None of this makes sense.  He’s not dead.  His arm is back.  He has the Black Bayard, something he knows he doesn’t deserve even if he can’t bring himself to let go of the familiar link of it to a life he once thought was his.    He doesn’t know where he is.  Or _why_ he is.   Everything’s wrong and suddenly, not for the first time but with a new seizing kind of fear, he realizes, exactly, how dangerous and terrifying that danger is.

And then something rumbles.

He’s on his feet in an instant, body responding fluidly despite the lingering pain, bayard up in one hand, other hand raised and glowing with threat.  That felt like - a ship’s engines maybe, kicking to life? Except it was short.  It’s already over. Not the continuous thrum he recognizes as a ship alive and in motion.  Looking around at the amount of wear and age evident on the broken containers and walls around him, he has to wonder if the ship he’s in - if it is a ship - is even capable of space travel.    
  
His exhale shakes and he’s glad he’s in his full armor.  Even - his helmet…. which he didn’t have before…..

He’ll worry about the returned arm more.

Belatedly he realizes he hasn’t tried contacting anyone on the comm installed in his helmet.  That’s the standard, and logical, response.  He needs to contact the team and -   
  
the shame moves through him enough to have him shutting his eyes and locking his jaw.   It hurts.  It physically hurts and he deserves it.  When he opens his eyes again, they’re dark with determination.

But he doesn’t open the channel on his helmet’s comm.

Instead he heads for the nearest wall.  He’ll follow it.  Follow it long enough, around enough of the room and chances are good he’ll find a door.  Get the door open and he can -   
  
he can see what he needs to do from there.

Damn. He feels so bone deep tired and its inside his chest and his stomach and the back of his mind more than his body.  He doesn’t want this.  He just wants -

the rumble comes again and his heart jumps into his throat.  Because that’s not a bad sound.  He can feel it for sure this time, up through the soles of his boots, vibrations to match the thrum in the air and something in his chest hurts and aches and cries all at the same time and he’s turned before it really occurs to him why or what he’s doing as -   
  
“Black?”

It comes out small, like a child, broken and weak and he knows that’s ridiculous because there’s no way, not after what he’s done, after everything he’s done that

Deeper in the dark of the ruined ship’s cargo hold a single oval of light flickers on and off and then becomes a steady golden glow, high - so high - above him.

“Black - ” it catches in his throat, choked up on tears and maybe he should be afraid because Black should destroy him or worse, reject him, and yet, here - now - at the end of all things

its his lion.

He doesn’t mean to.  He doesn’t intentionally open the link between them. But he’s always left himself open and vulnerable to Black and before him the true Shiro had as well and its as natural as breathing.  A need and a desire for that connection that makes him more than he is, that makes him _belong_.  And, again, he should feel the cold of Black’s rejection

but all he feels is the sweep of its presence 

“Black….” it comes out somewhere between a prayer, a cry and a lover’s caress.  He’s running toward the towering single light in the dark before he can even think, boots making echoing tin sounds as he runs.  And, if this was a nightmare, the one he deserves, than Black’s single eye would retreat in the darkness, leaving him forever chasing after something he can’t catch, doesn’t deserve.

But it doesn’t.  The light stays put and before he realizes it, he’s there, with his arms spread wide, in the dark again beyond the golden glow from overhead and he’s pressed up against the muzzle of his lion as close as he can force his body to get.  He understands, he caught that much.  That Shiro, the real Shiro, was trapped inside Black the entire time he was missing and right now - 

there’s nothing he’d rather do himself than fade right into the lion and disappear as well.

It’s acceptance sweeps over him like a wave of stars and eternal space and he’s never felt it so strong or clear before.  His throat tightens up and seals over and the tears stream out of his eyes and choke his breathing and he doesn’t care.  He’s done so much wrong, he’s been so broken and weak and used, and he doesn’t deserve any kind of forgiveness or acceptance and yet Black buried him in it as if the lion is the entire ocean pouring down over him until there’s nothing left but the two of them.  And that’s when he realizes -

“Something’s wrong….”

He can feel it, this deeply pressed into the lion’s conscious.  Something’s terribly, terribly wrong and its a great gaping wound across the conscious of the eternal lion.  He steps back and Black’s jaws open for him, a welcome home

but the lights along the floor of the lion’s mouth are dim and some of the marks don’t light at all and when he gets to the panel that leads into the interior itself he has to muscle it open and squeeze himself through.

Black’s been hurt.

Black’s been hurt badly.

It’s evident as he works his way to the cockpit.  There are stress fractures in the metal walls, the guide lights are fickle or dead, the air itself is dead and unmoving.  The door to the cockpit opens for him though, sliding with a grating sound but opening all the way and he feels how important this is to Black.  To be able to open the door for him.  To be able to let him in.  

The cockpit is a mockery of what he remembers.  Some of the consoles are cracked and one is nothing but a charred ruin.  There are no control sticks or - he spots one, torn off and all the way across the room.  The chair is pocked with burn marks but he settles carefully in it right away all the same.  And, right away, as if its been waiting this entire time for him, the screens flicker to ragged life, static and cutting in and out but determined to live for him all the same as the interior of his lion fills with a familiar purple light and his soul finally - finally - breathes again.  He forgets entirely about himself.

Reaching out he lays a hand on Black’s nearest console, gentle.  Opens himself as wide as he can to the connection and feels - relief?  Relief from his lion that he didn’t turn away?  It makes not sense to him but

“I’m here.  You’re hurt.  How can I fix this?  What happened?”

And, as has only happened to him in stolen memories, there’s a sudden flare through his own vision and

War.  Terrible, terrible war.  Zarkon at the helm, paladin of the Black Lion.  Daibazaal destroyed but not by Alfor.  By the Rift the falling comet had created.  Dark beings sweeping out from that point and starting to consume the universe.  Voltron, holding it back, destroying it, rallying against it.  Haggar dying, Zarkon going mad.  Altean alchemy used on living flesh.  Splintering alliances.  The entities from the Rift beginning to merge with living creatures, mutating them as they took over.  Horror. Darkness.  And the last thing he sees, before either his mind overloads or Black kicks him free for his own safety is Voltron - 

destroyed.

He comes to, blinking against tears again, shuddering and cold in the seat and most of the screens have died, only the dim purple glow left.

“They lost,” he has to swallow and it hurts.  His chest and stomach hurt.  He pressed a hand against the armor so that it will press into the flesh and give the pain some kind of focus.  “You lost.  The others are - gone.”

And the outside galaxy is a hellscape, full of hungry entities consuming everything in their path.

“This - isn’t my reality.  This is an alternate one, isn’t it?” between Slav’s lectures and the stories his own team - Shiro’s team - had told him about the retrieval of the second comet he understands its possible but - 

he exhales and it shakes but he exhales all the way until his lungs are completely empty and then holds it for several beats before pulling in a full one.  His voice is steadier when he asks:

“Why am I here?  What do you need me to do?”

The answer comes softer, images without words, not the overwhelming flood but a soft trickle that’s strangely - embarrassed.  He didn’t think Black was capable of embarrassment and yet

Created from a comet that can pass between dimensions Black has always been the lion with the most ties to that ability.  Damaged, without its paladin dead a galaxy away, dying, without the connection of its fellow lions, the rest of its whole self, Black had reached deep, desperate and scared and found other paladins across a hundred thousand other dimensions and times.  And found one - body dying - soul ripped free of that mortal shell already and Black had

taken

the dead body.

Snatched it between dimensions, scrabbling at what little it had available in desperation, caught that one dead piece of meat to itself and held it tight like a desperate promise

and the lion had waited.

Laid quiet in the dark and waited, drifting between dimensions and times.  Waiting for the one paladin that it could call its own.

Him.

Cast free without a body, without a connection, the lion had felt him fall and surged forward with everything it had left of itself to catch him and pull him here.  To this place. To this body.

To it.

He opened his eyes and stared at the screen without seeing anything.

“Takashi….” he lifted the hand in front of him and flexed the fingers.  “This is - his body.”  There was laughter there, somewhere below the surface but he didn’t dare let it loose.  Because it wasn’t sane laughter and he didn’t know that he’d be able to stop it if he let it free.  “He’s in my body now - and I’m in his.”

In the dark, the lion’s presence surrounded him, wounded to its soul, and did its best to cradle him.  This wasn’t the Black he remembered but - 

Opening himself, he responded in kind, doing his best to cradle eternity back in return.  

Eternity seemed surprisingly willing to mentally be cuddled.

For a long time, that was all there was between them.  Two damaged souls lost in hell together.  Finally he sniffed and wiped at his eyes and sat up a bit straighter.

“Okay.  I’m here now.  And I’m not going anywhere.  I’m glad you caught me.”  Blowing out a breath between his lips, he looked around the cockpit.  Reached out and caressed the nearest dead console.  Firmed his jaw and narrowed his eyes and his voice firmed as well.

“So I’m going to need you to show me what I can fix manually and how I can.  And I know how it works.  You can draw on me to get energy to repair yourself too.  It’s going to take time but no one knows we’re here.  We can do this.”

It was ridiculous, impossible, mad - and yet he found himself smiling and there was a hint of fang in it.

“We’re not out of the game yet.  And once we’re up and running - 

we’ll see about showing those monsters they’re not allowed to run free anymore.”

Someone had to.  And in a universe gone to hell - even a traitor could make a difference.  He’d seen enough. The universe wasn’t entirely consumed yet.  There were others fighting.  Others that needed help.

And hope.

Maybe he had no place where he’d been.  But here?

A broken paladin and a broken lion just might be able to make a difference.

And maybe

just maybe…

Black wasn’t the only lion broken and crippled and waiting for a paladin to make it whole again.

Maybe

just maybe

Voltron would live again.


End file.
